My brain breaks.
My jaw drops.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
The fucking audacity.
The charm—the invitation wrapped in a dare.
It hits like a current—the pull, the impossible spark, the way our rivalry always threatens to tilt into something feral when he looks at me like that.It’s not flirtation.It’s something darker.Something dangerous.Like he’s asking what would happen if we didn’t hold back this time.
I recover first, barely.“You’re fucking unbelievable.”
Cally smirks.“You noticed.”
I look away, fast, because if I don’t, I’ll choose violence or something even stupider.Break his nose.Kiss him until he forgets her name.Kiss him until I forget mine.
He starts walking toward the exit like he owns the place, and I follow, because I’m not letting her go with him.Because we’re both sick in the same way—addicted to this game we keep pretending is just about her.
There’s a black SUV idling at the curb.Tinted windows.Engine low and smooth, like it knows it’s about to carry a problem.
We stop at the same time.Like we’ve choreographed it.Like our anger hums in sync.And for the first time, I realize—this isn’t about winning.It’s about survival.
About surviving her without burning down everything we touch.
The SUV door opens.And there she is.
Vesper leans out from the backseat, brows raised, like this is all very tedious for her and not a slow, public unraveling of three lives knotted together by sex, bad timing, and everything we never learned how to say out loud.
“Glad you made it in one piece, boys,” she says, voice sugar-dipped in sarcasm.
She rolls her eyes like she didn’t just light a match and stroll away with the gasoline tucked under her arm.
The driver moves quickly then, opening the other doors for us like he can sense the tension crackling between two men who are one bad sentence away from doing something regrettable in public.
Vesper leans back into the seat, already done with us.
Like she didn’t just leave us standing there, wrecked, choosing restraint over disaster.I don’t look at Cal, but I feel him glance at me.
One second.
Two.
And then I move first, slipping into the front passenger seat without a word.Because if I sit in the back, I’ll reach for her without thinking—palm to the back of her neck, thumb tracing that spot beneath her jaw where her pulse betrays her calm.My body remembers her too well.Her sounds.Her sighs.The way she used to curl into me like I was the first place she’d ever felt safe.
The car starts, and just like that, we’re in motion.
Three hearts.
Two grudges.
One woman who might be the end of us all.
“You should’ve let Harvey charter you,” he says, voice pitched soft enough to sound like concern instead of a lecture.“Redeyes are for people who hate themselves.”
Vesper’s laugh is tired.It breaks at the end like it ran out of fuel.“I do hate myself.Keeps me humble.”
I grip the edge of the seat, not hard enough to show, just enough to keep my hands from doing what they want—reaching back, taking her face gently between my hands and kissing her until she forgets he’s here.Make her feel better, less stressed.
